Epic Games CEO Promises to Stop Game Exclusivity if Steam Lowers Its Commissions

Recently, we started noticing an interesting phenomenon happening at the video games market. Many of the game studios, which used to grant exclusive rights to their products to the platform Steam, now choose to cooperate with the Epic Games Store.The examples of this can be observed in our review of “Borderlands 3” and the trio developed by Quantic Dream: “Detroit: Become Human”, “Heavy Rain” and “Beyond: Two Souls”. The reason for this is quite simple: Steam takes 30% of the revenue, obtained from game sales, the developers only get 70%. Meanwhile, Steam’s main competitor, Epic Games Store, only charges 12%, which makes it a much more desirable option for the creators of video games.Game exclusivity is close to the concept of monopoly, which is obviously not quite good, but currently it is the only option to influence the company Valve, which owns Steam, and its ridiculous commissions.The CEO of Epic Games Tim Sweeney called this “#1 problem for PC developers, publishers, and everyone who relies on those businesses for their livelihood and claimed that they are determined to fix it.”In his following tweet, Sweeney promised to stop accepting exclusive rights from game studios if Steam lowered their commissions and let the developers earn money. He even promised to put his own games on Steam if this happens.

If Steam committed to a permanent 88% revenue share for all developers and publishers without major strings attached, Epic would hastily organize a retreat from exclusives (while honoring our partner commitments) and consider putting our own games on Steam.